Chapter Description

This article kicks off in the midst of fictional Sonic Systems' web project. It shows how the aim in creating a project blueprint was to eliminate the possibility for changes in the architecture during development, and to help development go as smoothly as possible.

From the Book

At this point, the pre-development phase of the Sonic Systems project was
well underway. The client's requirements had been gathered and the
preliminary groundwork had been laid for finalizing the project blueprint. In
order to finish this document, the detailed planning now needed to be completed.
The aim in creating the blueprint was to eliminate the possibility for changes
in the architecture during development, and to help development go as smoothly
as possible.

From this point on, Victor would need to do most of the planning, with
support from others. He really had to determine precisely how Project Omega was
going to build this portal solution: what templates would need to be created,
the exact structure of the database, the whole package. This planning was a
crucial part of the process. Any errors could lead to a delayed launch and cost
overruns.

Development Plan

Victor had a few issues to attend to in preparing for development. He needed
to finalize any research and make decisions on implementation techniques,
finalize the database dia-

gram, and finalize the overall architecture to be used in developing the
entire application. For the most part, many of the features had been planned in
terms of program flowthis was the key. The only items that were still
fuzzy was what exactly Jetspeed would be useful for, and how to capitalize on
the possibilities available with PSML for storing portlet information and
users' portal setup information.